Mistral Ai, the French company behind Ai Assistant Le Chat and several basic models, is officially considered one of France’s most promising tech startups and is Probably the only European company that could compete with Openai. Compared to its assessment of 6 billion US dollars, the global market share is still relatively low.
However, the recent start of his chat assistant in mobile app stores was encountered on a hype, especially in his home country. “Go and download the chat, which is made by Mistral and not by Chatgpt by Openaai – or something else,” said French President Emmanuel Macron In a TV interview Before the AI
While this wave of attention may be encouraging, the Mistral-Ki is still facing challenges and with its self-definition as “the greenest and leading independent AI laboratory in the world”.
What is Mistral Ai?
Since its foundation in 2023, Mistral Ai has increased significant financing amounts with the ambition to “put the Grenz -KI into the hands of everyone”. Although this is not a direct stab at Openai, the slogan should highlight the company’s advocacy for openness in the AI.
The alternative to Chatgpt, chat assistant le chat, is now too Available on iOS and Android. It reached 1 million downloads In the two weeks after his mobile publication, which even packed the top position of France for free downloads in the iOS app Store.
In addition to the Mistral Ai Mistral Ai Mistral Ai, this comes, including:
Who are Mistral Ai founders?
The three founders of Mistral Ai share a background in AI research among large US technology companies with considerable operations in Paris. CEO Arthur Mensch used to work at Google’s Deepmind, while CTO Timothée Lacroix and the Chief Scientist Officer Guillaume Lample are former META employees.
Also taken into account with reasons of co -founder Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve (also board member) and Charles Gorintin from the health insurance launch Alan and the former digital minister Cédric O, the caused controversy Because of his previous role.
Are the models of Mistral Ai Open Source?
Not all of them. Mistral Ai differentiates their leading models, their Weights are not available for commercial purposes, from its free models, for which it offers weight access as part of Apache 2.0 license.
Free models include research models such as Mistral Nemo, which was built in cooperation with Nvidia, which the startup Open sourcing In July 2024.
How does Mistral Ai earn money?
While many of Mistral Ai’s offers are free or are Now have free levelsMistral Ai plans to achieve some income from the paid levels of Le Chat. The Pro Chat -Pro plan introduced in February 2025 costs $ 14.99 per month.
On the purely B2B side, Mistral Ai is monetizing its leading models with APIs with a use-based pricing. Companies can also license these models, and the company probably also generates a significant share of its income from its strategic partnerships, some of which have highlighted it During the Paris Ai summit.
Overall, however, Mistral Ai’s income is still reported in the eight -pointed area after several sources.
What partnerships did Mistral Ai close?
In 2024 Mistral Ai completed a contract with Microsoft, which included a strategic partnership to distribute her AI models via the Azure platform from Microsoft and an investment of 15 million euros. The British competitive and markets authority (CMA) quickly completed that the deal was not qualified for investigations due to its small size. However, some also triggered some criticism In the EU.
In January 2025, Mistral Ai signed a contract with the press agency Agence France press (AFP) to have the entire text archive of the AFP queried from 1983.
Mistral Ai also secured strategic partnerships with France army And Job agencyGerman Defense -Tech -Startup HelsingPresent IBMPresent OrangeAnd Sternantis.
How much financing has Mistral Ai up to date?
By February 2025, Mistral Ai has so far increased around 1 billion euros in capital and about 1.04 billion US dollars to the current exchange rate. This includes some external financing and several rounds for equity financing, which were raised in close sequences.
In June 2023 and before it even published its first models Record of 112 million US dollars seed round round Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Sources at this time said the seeds – Europe’s greatest ever -Walzed the one-month startup with $ 260 million.
Other investors in this seed round were Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, capital in the first minute, heading, Jcdecaux Holding, La Famiglia, Local Globe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina and Xavier Niel.
Only six months later it closed a series A of € 385 million (At this time 415 million US dollars), with a reported assessment of 2 billion US dollars. The round was cited by Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), whereby the existing baking light speed and BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, condemnation, Elad Gil, General Catalyst and Salesforce were involved.
The 16.3 million USD convertible investments The Microsoft in Mistral Ai as part of its partnership announced in February 2024 was presented as an extension of Serie A, which implies an unchanged assessment.
In June 2024, Mistral Ai increased € 600 million in a mixture of equity and debts (At that time around 640 million US dollars to the exchange rate). The Long -term round was led by General Catalyst with an assessment of 6 billion US dollars with remarkable investors, including Cisco, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and others.
What could a Mistral Ai output look like?
Mistral is “not for sale”, According to man in January 2025 in the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Of course (an IPO is) the plan.”
This makes sense because the startup has so far increased: Even a large sale may not offer its investors much more, not to mention the concerns about sovereignty, depending on the purchaser.
However, the only way to definitely whisk persistent acquisition rumors is to scale sales at levels that could even justify the evaluation of almost 6 billion US dollars from afar. In any case, they stay tuned.
